Netball: Jets still struggling to find that winning formula

Yorkshire Jets’ poor season continued as they were beaten by 52-39 by Loughborough Lightning 52-39 in the Vitality Netball Superleague.

For most of the game it was a fairly even contest, but the Jets’ lack of consistency showed once again in the final quarter as a narrow five-goal deficit with 15 minutes remaining, quickly became a 13-goal deficit by the end.

After a strong performance last weekend, the starting seven for Jets was the same as it had been against the Thunder.

Despite that apparent fluidity, Jets started slowly with Lightning having the better of the early exchanges. The visitors came back strongly and impressively though towards the end of the quarter and only trailed by one point after 15 minutes.

It was end-to-end for most of quarter two and the Jets even pulled ahead briefly, but Lightning fought back to take a two-point lead into half-time, at 26-24.

After the break, the scores were quickly levelled with a strong start to the third quarter from Jets but they couldn’t keep up the momentum and Lightning capitalised with some quick goals. They regained and then stretched out a lead to five points before pulling away in the final quarter. With consistency an issue yet again, they couldn’t match the strength of the home side and fell to their eighth defeat in eight games.

The bottom-placed Jets are on the road on Friday evening against Team Bath.